Destiny: The Taken King Lets You Try Out Guns, Adds Multiplayer Mercy Rule

Destiny's next expansion, The Taken King, is looking to make Bungie's shooter almost an entirely new game. The developer has now revealed that it's significantly changing multiplayer matchmaking, the Gunsmith, and the way you upgrade your weapons.

In Game Informer's September cover story, the changes, additions, and improvements in The Taken King were outlined in considerable depth. Notably, Bungie is working on the Crucible, Destiny's competitive multiplayer mode, to make it more fair and a better overall experience. For one thing, Bungie is adding a mercy rule to the Crucible to end unfair matches early. If you find yourself in a wildly unbalanced match--your team is getting crushed, or vise versa--the mercy rule will come into effect, ending the match and putting your team back into matchmaking. Additionally, matchmaking itself has been retooled to more often match your team with teams of similar skill levels.

Bungie has also overhauled the in-game market for weapons. Longtime Destiny fans often laugh at the mention of the Gunsmith, an NPC who is important in the early parts of the game for acquiring weapons, but quickly loses all relevance. Now, Bungie is making the vendor useful for Guardians of every rank, because the Gunsmith now has a reputation meter like other vendors.

Unlike with other NPCs, however, you gain rank with the Gunsmith by testing out his weapons. This basically works like old Exotic weapon bounties. You "check out" a gun from the Gunsmith, and this gun has a bounty attached to it. If you complete that bounty, you'll turn the gun back in and receive reputation with the vendor. If you reach a high enough reputation level with the Gunsmith, you'll unlock the ability to buy legendaries directly from the vendor once a week.

Finally, Bungie is once again changing the way that you upgrade legendary and exotic weapons. Although you won't be able to boost the power of current legendaries, exotics and new legendary weapons can be buffed by utilizing unwanted exotic and legendary gear. You can sacrifice an item from the same gear slot to upgrade a different item, making receiving duplicate drops much less disappointing.

There's a ton more information in Game Informer's cover story; you can pick up a digital copy of it here.

The Taken King launches on September 15, and it'll come alongside an update that overhauls questing and rebalances weapons in the game. Keep an eye on GameSpot for more about The Taken King in the next month.